


hard reset

by seventhswan



Category: Undertale (Video Game)
Genre: Disabled Character, Gen, Memory, Nonbinary Frisk, Post-Pacifist Route, Wishes, game mechanics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-12-02
Updated: 2015-12-02
Packaged: 2018-05-04 11:23:22
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 959
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/5332364
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/seventhswan/pseuds/seventhswan
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p></p><blockquote>
  <p>There’s a theory about time travel that says you can go forward but you can’t go back. You can only go forward, and the way back collapses behind you like the universe sewing itself shut, mending the hurt of you clawing selfishly through.</p>
</blockquote><p>After moving to the surface, the monsters begin to forget.</p>
            </blockquote>





	hard reset

**Author's Note:**

> Warning for body horror (amalgamates).
> 
> Frisk in this story is physically mute but not deaf/HOH (I imagine due to permanent nerve damage to the larynx/vocal folds during childhood surgery or something similar) so uses ASL. Sans often uses sign to speak with Frisk even though technically this is not necessary, as a kind of bonding/”secret code” thing between them. ASL sections are in **bold**. If there are any issues with how I’ve written Frisk in this situation, please don’t hesitate to let me know!

**i. [Sans]**

Up here, the snow comes from the sky.

That first winter, Sans spends a lot of time standing around in the yard with his hands in his pockets, watching it come down. Floating. The snow in Snowdin… Where did it come from? It’s so hard to remember.

 **Sans** , Frisk signs, coming right up to his face, into his field of vision, waving. They look fondly exasperated, which is an attitude they’ve picked up from Tori. **Sans, are you watching?**

 **I’m watching, kid,** Sans signs. Frisk gets up on their toes to bop their forehead against his, and runs off back to where they’re making snow angels.

The snow in Snowdin must have come from somewhere. It didn’t taste this way, he doesn’t think.

Frisk gets up and stands beside him, so quiet that Sans doesn’t notice until they’re already there. They’re damp all up their back from lying in the snow. Tori would tut, Sans thinks, and say something about catching cold. 

Frisk slots their hand into his. It’s so very, very small. Sans used to think he was small, before, but he had no idea. Frisk opens their mouth exaggeratedly wide and tastes a snowflake, and then grins. Copying him. It’s just a game. That’s all.

The bodies of the snow angels are twisted and malformed where Frisk has rolled over in the snow, tiring of each one before they’re quite finished. They blur into one another, a tangle of limbs, littered across the yard like war dead. Later, Frisk gives them coal black eyes. Two smudges each.

Sans has the ridiculous feeling they look like someone he used to know.

**ii. [Papyrus]**

Frisk tells Papyrus that humans wish on stars, and birthday candles, but not the sun. Not other fires. They wish on the clock, too – when it says 11:11.

They don’t wish on flowers. Frisk gets a little crease between their eyebrows when Papyrus tries, bending the head of a daffodil towards him, speaking into its trumpet.

 **Papyrus!** they sign, their face aglow with silent laughter, **you’re so funny!**

Sometimes when they walk through the park, Papyrus could swear he hears whispering. Someone or something calling to him. Maybe it’s the wind, or something nesting in the trees.

 **iii. [Toriel]**

Toriel is Frisk’s mother. She drives them to school, she bandages their hurts, she buys the candles for their birthday cake. Life is sweet, the days long and sunlit, her child’s face upturned to hers, trusting, loving.

That’s all there is. If Toriel dreams of two other children, their faces shadowed - if she dreams of herself as another Toriel and another Toriel and another Toriel, stretching onwards like a hall of mirrors refracting the light back and forth until the image collapses in on itself - if sometimes she could swear she’s blown out the candles on an eighth birthday cake before, a ninth cake – if she feels she’s already been several mothers, several wives…

Well then, she’s as bad as her little one, isn’t she? Telling stories about dragons and unicorns and beanstalks right up to the sky, insisting that it could be true, that nobody knows. That’s okay for children, but Toriel is someone’s mother. She knows better than to see movement out of the corner of her eye and think it may be anything other than a trick of the light.

**iv. [Alphys]**

There are theories. That’s all Alphys can allow herself – theories. The science is speculative, mostly. Time travel, you know, things like that. People have thought about how to bend time. If it wasn’t ridiculous, and impossible.

Parallel universes. It’s just a thought exercise. It’s supposed to be fun. Stretch your brain out, make a big list like _if this, then this, if that, then…_ But “this” is impossible in the first place. There is no “this”.

There isn’t. There’s now, there’s Undyne’s big smile, the apple tree they’re growing in the backyard, Undyne’s sketches of the big wooden swing she’s going to put up in it for Frisk. There is only now, where Alphys is no longer alone but instead part of Alphys-and-Undyne, where Undyne gets sweaty working out and flexes her biceps in her tank top to make Alphys blush, where they drink tea-and-soda together on the porch in the evenings. If there was another universe, Alphys would want no part of it anyway. Here is perfect.

[There’s a theory that you can go forward in time but you can’t go back. You can only go forward, and the way back collapses behind you like the universe sewing itself shut, mending the hurt of you clawing selfishly through.]

**v. [Undyne]**

\-- Undyne wakes up gasping, clutching her chest where there’s a burning pain, like someone took a spear and thrust it upwards, right under her ribs --

**vi. [snowdrake’s mother]**

there was a cold place. it was so cold. it was cold, and something was so… so funny.

here isn’t cold. there’s someone else here. when they make you laugh it is warm, not cold. not anymore.

 _mom_ , the someone else says. _mom, i love you._

the someone else wraps you up in bandages to stop the sliding feeling. right from your feet to the top of your highest head. they leave a space for your eyes, for all your eyes, so you can still see their smile.

 _hello mom,_ they say, laughing.

there were others in the cold place. when you say this, the someone else says _yes, mom, they’re back with their families_ , but you are not so sure.

there was one more. the last one, the one who tucked you under something soft every night. the one with no face. did they get out of the cold place?

you don’t know, and no-one will tell you.

**Author's Note:**

> I wanted to play with a version of the Undertale universe where the act of repeatedly resetting the game in pursuit of the true pacifist ending eventually leaves the characters' memories degraded - so that they then, over time, forget what they left behind in the underground. So echo flowers are forgotten, and Chara and Asriel, and the tentacled amalgamate, etc. At the same time, they experience intrusive flashbacks to traumatic 'deleted' timelines (Undyne).
> 
> Or, in short, what if the happy true pacifist ending came at a large psychological cost?


End file.
